After three years of hell, Harlan John McGuiness had achieved
a measure of peace and a sizeable lump of compensation. The newspaper
that had identified him as the Jungle Gym Killer was forced to pay damages,
and the police who had jumped on the media juggernaut were made to eat
crow and issue a public statement declaring his innocence.

Everything was back to normal, if you discounted Harlan's
having had to sell his house to pay lawyers, losing his fianceé
due to the merciless accusations, and getting fired from his job as a draftsman
for one of Boston's more conservative engineering firms. Mr. Korbin,
the office manager, had had him in for a private chat and told him how
he, Harlan, wouldn't want the firm's image to suffer from his involvement
in something unsavory. Harlan had considered suing for unfair dismissal,
but his lawyer hadn't thought the case had much of a chance. At least,
he said he didn't have time to take it on. After Korbin was killed
in a hit-and-run a few days later, there hadn't seemed much point; still
less when the lawyer had fallen asleep at the wheel and driven off a bridge
the following week.

After the settlement, Harlan had expected that life might
return to something like normal. He invested the settlement money,
bought a condo, and began job hunting. After the seventh interview,
which fizzled out after starting brightly, Harlan had second thoughts about
the possibility of normality. His doctor advised a change of scene
and a vitamin tonic.

After a hiking trip through the White Mountains with a
bottle of Super-Vites, Harlan came back feeling ready to start again.
Collecting his mail from the concierge's office, he found a card from the
Boston Police dated three days previously, asking him to contact Sergeant
Rickson. He recalled the name from the murder investigation; Rickson
had been one of the team who'd turned up on Harlan's doorstep with depressing
frequency. Maybe he wanted to make a personal apology, now that Harlan's
name had been cleared.

Legs fit from ten days' hiking, Harlan walked to the nominated
police station and presented himself at the desk with Sergeant Rickson's
card.

He was stashed in a stale interview room and left with
a lukewarm over-sugared coffee for twenty minutes before Rickson came into
the room. It took a while for the staccato questions to form
themselves into realization. Pushing back his chair, Harlan got to
his feet, smacked his hand on the table and said in loud tones "I
was found completely innocent of any, repeat, ANY, crime; I was compensated
for libel, and your own Commissioner had to look the fool by apologizing
to me on television. If you have ANYTHING to ask me now or in the
future, you can make an appointment with my lawyer." Without waiting
to see Rickson's response, Harlan marched out of the room, down the corridor,
and into the overcast late afternoon.

He strode along the Charles River in a red fog, anger
and fear churning in his gut. Was this what he could expect from
now forward: every time a child went missing or turned up dead, to be questioned
as if he had a record as a pedophile?

Nothing further came of Rickson's questions, although
Harlan took the precaution of giving his new lawyer a minutely detailed
account of the interview. After a while, the feeling of prickly heat
in his forearms every time the phone rang or a knock came at the door faded,
but Harlan's pleasure in his new apartment had been spoiled. He found
the location of the children's indoor play area on the roof particularly
uncomfortable: somehow every time he got in the elevator it seemed full
of children. He feared to look at them lest a watcher report him
to some faceless authority figure, and so got a reputation as a bit of
a grouch among the young mothers in his building.

Dropping his first name along with his hopes of finding
a job, McGuinness rented out the apartment and moved to Portland.
Long walks along the Maine coast helped release the feelings of panic and
injustice, although McGuinness carefully avoided contact with children
he met along the way. It was on one of these walks that he observed
a colony of fiddler crabs going about their comical activities. The
next time he came, he brought a sketchpad and pencils. He discovered
the little creatures, with their jointed legs and jerky movements, were
not unlike the mechanical creations he'd spent his working life depicting.

By luck as much as talent, his first book, "Artie and
Bill and the Big Brown Bottle" took a respectable bronze medal in a prestigious
children's book award. "Artie and Bill and the Picnic Basket" soon
followed, and eventually it was considered an incomplete Christmas if New
England children didn't find a new Artie and Bill book under the tree.

Harlan McGuinness began to like Portland. It didn't
offer Boston's cultural pursuits, but there were compensations. He
could grow a beard without anyone making any rude comments about it--so
he did. He could put Worcestershire sauce on his scrambled eggs at
Len's Diner and all Dolly the waitress said was "Want some ketchup too?"

After a few months he began house hunting and eventually
found a one and a half bedroom house that the realtor had given up hope
of selling. On its roof was a fanciful widow's walk, looking like
something out of a fairy tale. The whimsy of the place appealed to
Harlan, and he made an offer and got the place for a song and a chorus
by two-thirty the same day.

The misery of the false accusation and the three-year
investigation and the subsequent questioning by Rickson finally began to
fade from Harlan's mind; but like an old bruise, it still could twinge.
Slowly, the new life was coming to seem livable.

An acquaintance with a local antique dealer led to membership
of the backgammon club and a modest social life. Harlan, now known
even to himself as John, felt his shoulders finally relaxing and settling,
no longer bunched up around his ears as if awaiting a blow.

It was early June; he had been six years in Portland.
The fifth Artie and Bill book was struggling to life on the big drafting
board in the half-bedroom which had become the workroom. Harlan often
sat on a campstool on the ersatz widow's walk, staring out at the beach
beyond the rooftops of the small cottages down the road. The little
eyrie had become a favorite spot on warm days: here he got some of his
best ideas for Artie and Bill. The ship's ladder that led to the
roof from the upstairs hall was not for those prone to dizzy spells, but
Harlan didn't mind it. He came up here with a thermos of coffee and
a pocket CD player and was as close to joyful as he allowed himself to
be.

He watched the terns spinning like compass needles on
the tips of their wings over the riffles of foam that ran up the beach.
He tried to count waves, to see if the seventh really did go the farthest.
His eyelids drooped.

A raspy voice ripped him from a dream of flying.
"So this is where you hide out. I knocked but no one answered.
Shouldn't leave your front door open like that, it's just an invitation
to your neighborhood light-fingered Louies." The net-veined
nose and scurfy hair of Sergeant Rickson poked itself clear of the hatch,
and the gooseberry eyes blinked in the bright light.

Harlan screamed and lashed out with his feet, scrabbling
to get upright, to get away, to not have to listen to what the horrid voice
would say next. The small table fell over, knocking the prop of the
skylight from its socket. The skylight fell with a crash on the shaggy
head, there was a muffled roar and a thump. And then only the mew
of gulls and slosh of withdrawing water sounded on the clear air.

From below the postman's voice floated up. "What's up,
Mr. McGuinness, hornets?" He stuffed a magazine and a few envelopes
into the letterbox and looked up again.

Harlan took a deep breath and said "Something like that.
Might have been a Yellow-jacket. I dozed off, he must have been after
my coffee." He flourished the mug at the postman and mimed something
flying around it.

With a wave the postman got on his motorcycle, did a U-turn
near the vacant lot next to Harlan's place and puttered off.

Harlan picked up the table and set the CD player and the
thermos back on it. I can't stay up here forever, he thought, but
I don't want to go down and see what's there. With a reasonably steady
hand he poured out the last of the coffee and sipped it.

Why had Rickson come here? It could only be because
some child, somewhere, had come to harm and Rickson had run through his
usual suspect list and was casting his net wider. I really thought
all that was behind me, Harlan thought, the coffee bitter on his palate.
Now he's down there on my floor, dead or dying, or just bloody mad, and
my life's about to be gone over with a pickaxe again. Maybe I should
just jump off the roof now, save us all a lot of trouble. Would a
fall from this height kill me, or just break me up a bit? Could I
force myself to fall headfirst onto the back patio where there'd be some
certainty of instant death?

First things first: get off the roof and out of sight..
Keeping low, Harlan opened the skylight hatch and restored the fallen prop.
He looked down. At the foot of the ladder that led to his aerie lay
a rumpled gray mass. Harlan looked long and hard and could not detect
any sign of breathing.

Harlan went down the ladder and jumped well clear of the
body on the floor.

Kneeling beside Rickson, he felt for a pulse. He
thought he felt something, but it might be his own blood, pumping erratically.
He put the back of his hand on the florid cheek: was he imagining it, or
was the flesh abnormally cool?

What could he do? What would an innocent man do?
Call an ambulance, obviously. But if Rickson were still alive, he
might recover, and then whatever new horrors he had come to inflict on
Harlan would merely have been postponed. But if he didn't call
an ambulance, he'd be stuck with Rickson: obviously he couldn't keep 180
pounds of dead meat in his upstairs hall indefinitely. If it was
dead meat.

How would you get rid of something like a body?
Digging a hole in the vacant lot next door would attract attention.
Putting it in the van had the same drawbacks, and that would just transfer
the problem. Could he possibly wait until tonight, put the body in
the van, and dump it somewhere?

He could cut the body up so it could be more easily moved.
Harlan understood that the bathtub was the venue of choice for ax murderers
in fact and fiction. Could he get Rickson into the tub, and could
he bring himself to joint the man like a side of beef? For someone
who had difficulty getting the legs off a roasting chicken this prospect
was daunting.

Then there was the possibility that someone had seen Rickson
coming up the path and into his house. Harlan sat back on his heels
and considered who that could be. The postman had come along after
Rickson's arrival. The people directly across the street both worked
all day. Mrs. Harrison in the next house was visiting her daughter
in Augusta, he remembered her mentioning it when they exchanged good mornings
a few days ago. There were several other people in the neighborhood
about whom Harlan knew little. What if one of them was home with
summer flu and had seen Rickson?

Alright, get yourself together. Is Rickson dead?
Harlan tugged at the limp body and managed to roll it over into what the
TV doctors called the coma position. You were supposed to make sure
the airways were clear, that was the next step.

The thought of putting his fingers into anyone's mouth
to clear his airway appalled Harlan. As a compromise, he thumped
the flat of his hand between Rickson's shoulder blades. A noise like
a burp came from the flaccid mouth. It might mean the man was alive,
or it might just be something the newly dead did.

That brought up a new problem: so far all that had happened
was an accident, but if Harlan dragged Rickson into the bath tub and began
to disjoint him and then he came to, he'd have to actually kill the man.
One could hardly leave a half-dead person in the bathtub, and once the
first cut was made the die was well and truly cast. If he revived,
he'd know in a minute what Harlan had intended to do, and the only response
would be swift slash across the throat.

That would probably be bloody. Not only might Harlan
himself be covered in Rickson's blood, his bathroom would be as well.
Harlan thought about the grout lines in the small old-fashioned tile floor.
No matter what he did, he'd never get all the blood out. He'd watched
too many episodes of CSI to be unaware of the clever things forensic specialists
could do. A spritz of luminol and he'd be looking at 30 years behind
bars, that's if they didn't send him to Bridgewater indefinitely.

Who'd have thought it was so hard to tell if a person
was alive or dead? Harlan gingerly put his ear against Rickson's
chest. He could hear some gurgling noises, but whether that was post
mortem intestinal activity or his own frightened blood racing through his
ears he had no idea. Clearly, he'd have to be sure Rickson was dead
before trying to cut him up. A pillow held over the face would be
the cleanest method. Harlan fetched a spare pillow from the closet
and stood holding it. Then he thought, if I have to cut up the body,
I'll have to get the clothes off it. With fumbling fingers, he undid
Rickson's already loose necktie and unbuttoned a few shirt buttons.
The thought of the large lardy body lying in his hall completely naked
was more than he could contemplate sober. He needed a drink.
Moved by some obscure feeling of decency, he put the pillow down and lifted
the scurfy head onto it. As an afterthought, he brought a blanket
as well and laid it over the body. He might need to use it as a sort
of toboggan to drag the body into the bathroom.

Glad of any excuse to get away from the corpse or near-corpse,
Harlan went downstairs to his modest liquor cabinet. He poured a
whisky out and stood staring at it. Leaving it on the sideboard,
he went into the kitchen and looked over his cutlery. He had a French
chef's knife and a bread knife and a serrated middle-sized knife that he
used for tomatoes and salamis. Somehow it didn't look like enough.

He pulled out his Larousse and flipped to the section
on meat cutting. Here, nicely laid out with dotted lines, were instructions
on how to carve ducks, bone chickens and a realistic full colour plate
with all the cuts of beef overlaid on a red and white carcass. As
a DIY help it was better than nothing, but Harlan wondered how much like
a steer a human body really was. Leaving the book open on the counter,
he took the knives into the living room and put them on the sideboard.
He picked up the drink and went to the foot of the stairs.

There was nothing for it: he'd have to get rid of Rickson,
there wasn't any other solution. He'd waited so long now it would
look odd if he rang the ambulance, it must be all of three hours since
the initial shock. How would he explain not doing anything sooner?
He'd have to go through with it, there was no way out. If the man
weren't dead by now, the pillow would finish him.

He started upstairs. Each foot seemed to weigh
fifty pounds. Accused of crimes he didn't do, he was now about to
commit one to protect the new life he'd cobbled together. If this
didn't work, if he got caught, he could see the headlines: "Artie and Bill's
Dad an Ax Murderer". "Mutilation Murder: Fiddler Crab Writer Charged."

As he reached the first landing, there was a rap on the
front door, and before he could react, a bush of grey curls surmounted
by an improbable straw hat pushed its way into his house.

"Sorry to barge in, I'm looking for my husband.
You must be Harlan McGuinness, I remember your pictures from the papers.
Say, that was an awful thing they did to you, I knew you never did it from
the first time I heard Dan talking about it. You must be pretty happy
about his news, hey?"

Harlan stood on the landing feeling as if he was about
to pass out. Rickson hadn't been alone, and now he'd have to kill
this babbling booby as well. Was there never to be an end to his
trouble?

His eye sliding to the sideboard where the French chef
knife glittered in a shaft of sun, he said, "Um, husband?" while calculating
how he could get over to the knife and stab this woman before she made
any fuss. And could his bathtub possibly accommodate two overweight
people?

The plump little woman trotted into the living room from
the doorway, carefully latching the door behind her. Good, she was
off the braided rug; that would make things easier. A second Harlan
stayed on the landing while his doppelganger moved down the last few steps,
eyeing the knife even as he set the drink down on the phone table.

"Yes, Dan Rickson. He wanted to tell you the good
news himself, since he'd give you such a hard time, he said. It took
him weeks to track you down, but that's my Dan, just like a bloodhound
when he's on the trail. He said he'd only be five minutes, but it's
been over twen'y now and it's hot in that car, no air conditioning.
Where is he?"

Harlan stood looking at the woman. "Accident." was
all he could get out. He jerked his head towards the upstairs hall.

"Have you called an ambulance? Have you tried first
aid?" she demanded.

"No dial tone," Harlan offered the first lie he could
think of, adding, "always meant to do the Red Cross course."

Mrs. Rickson ripped open the flap of her handbag and pulled
out a cell phone. Punching numbers in rapidly she snarled "I can't
believe you don't know basic first aid in this day and age!" Getting
connected to someone, she spoke rapidly, then snapped the phone shut.

"They'll be here in ten minutes" she said, running up
the stairs. Harlan could hear her slapping her husband's face and
calling his name. Grunts and wheezes indicated she might be trying
CPR. Faster than expected, the local ambulance wailed up the street.
Feet thumped on Harlan's front walk, large men with medical bags and a
stretcher pounded up his stairs. Through it all, Harlan stood by
the phone and felt foolish. The ambulance men pounded back down the
stairs, rather more slowly with the burden of Rickson on the stretcher.
Harlan noticed that the sheet over the large body wasn't covering the face.

Mrs. Rickson trotted down the stairs after the ambulance
men. "You should take yourself a Red Cross course, Mr. McGuiness.
It pays to be prepared. But I guess you did OK. Just a bit
of advice, never give liquor after an injury, especially a head injury.
You must have been remembering those old stories about brandy for shock
or something. Maybe you better drink that drink yourself. You
sure you're alright?" Without waiting to hear the answer, she went
out, leaving the door open behind her.

Harlan took the still untasted drink to the front window.
He watched the ambulance pull away, followed a minute later by a large
blue car that had been parked under a tree further up the street.
Rickson must have wanted to talk to him without the chatterbox wife hijacking
the conversation. From what Mrs. Rickson had said, it sounded like
the Jungle Gym Killer had finally been identified, and the fat cop had
decided to bring the good news personally.

Rickson would never know what he owed his wife.
If she hadn't barged into Harlan's house when she did, Rickson would now
be just a pile of cooling joints and suet.

He whistled a Bach gigue as he picked up the knives and
returned them to their slots in the kitchen. Would I really have
had the nerve to go through with it? he wondered. Cut up a
whole body? Or even two? He doubted he'd have been able
to do it. Cutting people up was so…personal. You had to get
involved. Get dirty, even.

It wasn't at all like running someone down on a dark street,
or dropping a sleeping pill in a glass of beer.